After last week’s presentation of Yeezy Season 01, we asked a friend of the page who was in attendance to share an anonymous open letter of their impressions and reflections. That letter follows.
I arrived at a gate lined wall to wall with security guards, all of whom appeared to be suffering under an ancient curse that rendered them incapable of communicating with one another, each confidently directing me toward a different entrance. Eventually, I found the right one and joined a line full of who’s who, by which I mean, quite literally, who the fuck are all these people? Everyone around me was violently shoving one another to the ground in a desperate attempt to get one step closer to the long-abandoned Korean supermarket Ye had purchased some time ago, now apparently home to the Yeezy flagship store. I luckily ran into a friend, amongst the chaos, and we spent the next hour or so enjoying our time in line, playing a game of Simon Says with security. One guard would tell us to move left while another, at the exact same time, would tell us to move right as they kept opening the barricades for random people who had somehow convinced security they were celebrities or on the guest list, only for their transparent attempts to sneak in to end with them being forcibly removed from the line. This happened a lot. I harbor no judgement for someone trying to get their foot in the door, trying to catch a glimpse of the baseball game through the cracks in the fence. I was that guy not so long ago. We all want to be a part of something, we all want to see what Ye’s doing next. The guy who seemed to be in charge of the gates appeared to share in that sentiment as he was very kind to everyone despite the insanity and deception. Looking around at everyone’s hurt ego coming out by yelling at security, the door man, and each other, I was reminded how community starved we are in Los Angeles and how in the rare times an event like this graces our city, it can’t help but become a frenzy. The infamous Yeezy disorganization was apparent from the start, something I’d hoped they would have figured out or at least slightly remedied by now. Then again, genius has rarely been known for its organizational skills.
By the time I was escorted into the venue, which looked like the kind of place you might imagine yourself in during a sensory deprivation session, it was already 40 minutes past the advertised start time, and nothing had begun. Somehow, after all these years, fashion still imagines the future looks like a cave. This vaguely extraterrestrial, post-apocalyptic design has become such an exhausted visual shorthand for a future that it no longer feels futuristic.
I had trouble finding my seat, so I consulted the attendants, all dressed like extras from Westworld and apparently programmed for everything except hospitality. It’s numbered. You’ll figure it out, one told me while avoiding eye-contact. I walked past the streamer N3on, surrounded by his crew, speaking to people who weren’t there. I found my seat and ran into a number of people I love dearly, many of whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. As one friend put it, this was Instagram IRL. It made me think about how, the longer you live, the longer you work, the more years that pass, you eventually begin to look around at the people you’ve known for years and years and years and realize that, somewhere along the way, you’ve all become or are all becoming the culture. That made me feel strange.
The lights dimmed, we found our seats again, and after a few minutes, the unmistakable DING from Ye’s “Runaway” rang out. What followed was a monologue from architect Bianca Censori, playing over an unexpected take on the runway show format, with models walking fast in opposing directions as their paths constantly crossed. The soundtrack contained an unreleased Ye track (which I liked, for the record). The rest felt like someone had put the aux on shuffle, before concluding with a choir performance. I’ve come to expect such extraordinary things from Ye’s use of choirs but this one felt tacked on. Hearing a 1010benja song brought a smile to my face. I have a sneaking suspicion that was Izzy Spears’s doing.
The Gosha-overseen menswear was fitted over the very type of boy he’s consistently accused of preying on. It’s strange what we decide to remember and what we decide to forget. When does the value we place on someone’s talent outweigh the value we place on the people they may have harmed? Military inspired outerwear, oversized bombers, high neck jackets, and loose trousers. There were some compelling silhouettes particularly in the leather outerwear. Everything’s wearable, functional, unmistakably Yeezy. The menswear side seems to suffer from an army of talented reference pullers who aren’t very capable of turning those references into anything of their own. I worry we’ve become so accustomed to knowing what everything should look like that we’ve forgotten how to make something true.
The womenswear was more interesting. Near nudity and complete concealment with sheer bodysuits, skin tight jumpsuits, thigh high boots, oversized outerwear, and cinched leather trenches. There was something interesting in the contrast between the exposed and the protective, almost militaristic silhouettes, and much of it feels like a continuation of an aesthetic Yeezy has been exploring for over a decade. From what I understand, this part of the collection was conceived and developed by a design team made up entirely of women. It’s nice to know there’s a strong female voice within Yeezy right now, one that's not simply being consulted but making decisions, particularly in an industry where women are rarely in positions of authority. You can feel the DNA of Prototypes (label founded by Laura Beham and Callum Pidgeon), Peri Rosenzweig (designer & one half of the styling duo HARDSTYLE), Vanessa Beecroft (Italian performance artist), Bianca Censori (Australian multi-hyphenate), and many more.
A friend recently told me a story about showing his younger brother Casablanca for the first time. When it ended, his brother said, That was cool, but pretty cliché. As the show came to a close, I couldn't help feeling I'd seen it all before, only this time without any clear point of view.
I opened Instagram the morning after the show and suddenly everyone had a photo with him. Which is strange to me because, would he have let that happen years ago? I don’t think so. Would those people want a photo with him last year? I don't think so. The people quickest to condemn him are often just one good album, or apparently one photo together, away from forgiving him entirely. For Ye, it seems that the public allows his redemption not based on whether he's actually changed as a person but whether he'd made something great enough for us to forgive him. I think that's a problem.
If Season 01 is a fresh start, maybe an attempt at a clean slate, I wish we’d felt more of that ambition in the presentation and work itself. We haven’t had a show since 2022, and outside of getting things to market for the holidays, I’m not sure what the rush was. I would have waited. I wanted something that did what Ye’s work has so often done for me: offer a glimpse into a brighter future. Instead, it all felt painfully familiar. Maybe it’s unfair to keep expecting that feeling, but after two decades of telling us he’s a genius, and giving us so many reasons to believe him, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hope to be reminded why we cared so much in the first place. There’s a pattern we’ve come to expect, one he’s helped establish, where even after things go terribly wrong, he returns with something only he could have made. Of course, that doesn’t undo the harm, nor should the work be expected to. Bully disappointed me, particularly its use of AI, though I suppose after two decades of telling us nobody else could do what he does, it turns out he was right about the computers, too. And as beautiful as the stadium shows are, they’re largely celebrations of work we already love. I’m still hoping for something new. The difficulty is that Yeezy has never really been just about the product. Why is it that we can’t talk about Yeezy without having to reckon with the entirety of Ye’s personal history? We don’t hold JW Anderson or Demna to the same standard. We don’t drag every skeleton out of their closets and put them on display each time they send a collection down the runway. So why does a conversation about Yeezy so often have to become a moral trial on Ye himself? I think it’s because Yeezy ultimately works because of our relationship to Ye as an artist, a cultural figure, a person we’ve collectively assigned an almost impossible degree of significance to. His worth as a person has become so tangled up with the value of his work that, for some, his genius means he can do no wrong, while for others, the allowances made for that genius have become impossible to justify. Making something beautiful doesn’t make you a better person any more than making something disappointing makes you a worse one. We’ve confused artistic achievement with moral accountability for so long that I’m not sure we know how to separate them anymore. We seem to have developed a remarkably sophisticated set of moral principles, most of which can be suspended with a sufficiently good album or fashion show. I just wish this show had given me something to look forward to.
I remember the first time I watched Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers. I hated it. I hated it so much and was so outspoken about that hatred, that somewhere in the middle of one of my many rants to friends who had to have grown exhausted by my opinions, I realized I actually loved the movie. The intensity of my reaction had somehow prevented me from understanding what I was actually feeling. I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. A strong feeling can be difficult to decipher.
I want to believe this show represents a genuine attempt towards a new beginning, which makes it all the more difficult for me to understand why people like Gosha still seem to occupy such important roles within Yeezy. It makes me question whether I'm seeing genuine change or simply seeing what I want to see. One of the most compelling ideas behind Yeezy has always been the removal of fashions’ barrier to entry. Taking the design and quality traditionally reserved for luxury houses and making them accessible to the ordinary person. Well designed, affordable clothes for everyday life, without the pretension or exclusivity that so often defines good design.
We’re in a drought, desperate for something to believe in, for some sense of community, for something or someone that brings us together. So much of fashion and design only exists for an increasingly small circle of people who already have everything. Who’s making things for everyone else? For the kid who drove to Los Angeles from his hometown with nothing and spent his first few months sleeping in his car. For the brilliant young artist working two jobs while still in high school to help put food on their family’s table. For the kid in some small town who has never set foot in a gallery or a fashion show. For the single mother who wants her children to have beautiful things without having to choose between those things and groceries. These are the people I always believed Yeezy was for. The idea that excellent design, beauty, and the dignity that comes with them shouldn’t be privileges reserved for those who can afford admission. That you could make something extraordinary and put it in the hands of someone the world has told, time and time again, that those things aren’t meant for them. I think that’s a genuinely radical ambition, and one that’s more necessary now than ever, in a world that seems increasingly determined to keep us divided, isolated, and suspicious of one another. I want us to have things in common again. Things we can love together, things that make us feel like we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. I found that sense of belonging in Ye’s work when I was younger. I know I’m not alone in that. And I still believe it’s there, somewhere. I just want to feel it again.
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shout out whoever wrote this i like the way they think